


You Never Get the Toy You Want from a Gachapon

by writing_in_the_dark



Category: Gintama
Genre: Comedy, Cute Kids, GinHiji - Freeform, Happy Ending, HijiGin, M/M, Mpreg, Slice of Life, faux mpreg if I'm being honest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:08:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23483590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_in_the_dark/pseuds/writing_in_the_dark
Summary: Gintoki and Hijikata spend a drunken evening together. As a consequence, they become co-parents.
Relationships: Hijikata Toshirou/Sakata Gintoki
Comments: 43
Kudos: 144





	1. Merely Understanding How Babies Are Made Doesn’t Prevent Unwanted Pregnancies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy anniversary to the Gintama anime!

Gintoki prefers to be paid in cash, but times are tough for everyone, and he sometimes has to accept like-kind payments. His latest job, recovering a salamander-like Amanto family’s life savings from thieves, falls into the latter category.

He finds the thieves, beats the crap out of them, and takes the box of alien currency to its rightful owners. When he arrives at the family’s specialty grocery store, only the two eldest family members, who don’t speak Japanese, are around. He hands the box over and says, “Here you go…”

He gets embarrassed when he realizes they have no idea what he’s saying.

He can’t understand what they’re saying either, but they seem relieved and grateful. The grandma clutches the small charm hanging from her necklace and cries tears of joy. The grandpa fills two grocery bags with a variety of small bottles of liquid and hands them to Gintoki.

He accepts his payment with, “Thank you for your business…uh… _xie-xie_ …uh… _gracias_ … _por_ , uh, _para_ … _u-usted_ -…”

He cringes at his own awkward use of other Earth languages that he doesn’t speak and that his clients don’t understand any better than they understand Japanese. He stops talking and bows. They’ve hopefully seen that before and know what it means.

When he gets home, he inspects his payment. He doesn’t bother counting, but as agreed, it looks like there are two-dozen little bottles of what he assumes is liquor, labeled in a language he can’t even begin to read. He unscrews the cap on one of them and takes a whiff. Smells like liquor – some kind of citrus liqueur, specifically. He takes a tiny sip. It tastes like citrus liqueur. It’s nice. He drains the rest of the bottle down his throat. Mmm, tasty. He can feel the alcohol moving through his system. A single shot of liquor is obviously not enough to get him buzzed, much less drunk, but it’s pleasant.

He and a friend could probably get nice and wasted off of the rest of the bottles. If only he was seeing someone. Unfortunately, he doesn’t even have a sex friend right now.

There is that one guy… They’ve shared a couple drunk kisses, but it hasn’t gone any further, because the guy always blushes and makes an excuse to get away. He’d probably loosen up and be loads of fun if he drank a few of these bottles.

Gintoki concludes he is a genius. He grins and decides he will go out with his bags of libations, find Blushes-When-Kissed-kun, take him to a love hotel, get him tipsy, and do stuff.

Luckily, Blushes-kun is easy to find, because he’s such a creature of habit, not breaking from his routine, even during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Gintoki catches him on his way to his usual Thursday night watering hole.

He literally catches him, grabbing him by the arm, eliciting an angry, “Let go of me, asshole!”

Gintoki does not let go. “Don’t be mean, Oogushi-kun. I got paid for a job in liquor, and I thought I would be a nice guy and offer to let you be the one to share the spoils with me.”

Hijikata looks down at the bags in Gintoki’s hand and relaxes a bit.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to save your hard-earned money but still drink?” he offers enticingly.

Hijikata looks away. “I… I suppose.”

Gintoki smirks. He wins! He’s about to win this next battle as well. He just has to be a little bit sneaky. “We need somewhere private to go. I have a kid at home, so let’s go to your room.”

“No, moron! We can’t drink there.”

“Well, where should we go?” Gintoki asks, as if he didn’t already have a place in mind. He pauses, pretending to give it some thought, then he fake-reluctantly suggests, “I can’t think of any place other than a love hotel, but…” He lets go of Hijikata and acts like he’s giving up on the idea. “Sorry. Never mind. I didn’t realize we didn’t have any place to go, and it’s cold outside. I think I’ll just go home.”

He turns around and starts walking away but stops when he hears, “Wait… I guess it would be ok if we go to a hotel. I mean, you know… just to drink in privacy, obviously, not for… other stuff.”

Gintoki grins ear-to-ear while facing away from Hijikata, then he puts his face back to normal, turns around, and makes sure the final decision to go to a love hotel appears to be Hijikata’s. “As long as you’re ok with that.”

“Y-yeah…” Hijikata agrees, predictably blushing. “It’s fine.”

Hijikata is stiff and uncomfortable as they walk to a hotel, check in, and go to the room, but Gintoki is confident he’ll loosen up shortly. He takes the bottles out of the bags and lines them up on the dresser in matching pairs. There are 25 bottles, two of thirteen different kinds, with the exception of the one he drank already. The owner of the shop must have given him a bonus set as extra thanks for helping them. He hands the lone unpaired bottle to Hijikata and says, “I had this one earlier. It tastes like some kind of citrus liqueur.”

Hijikata unscrews the cap and tentatively takes a sniff. Repeating Gintoki’s actions from earlier, he takes a tiny sip. It tastes good, so he drinks the rest.

“Well? What did you think? I thought it was a mix of lemon and lime.”

“Maybe, but with something sweet mixed in, like orange.”

“Which one should we try next?”

Hijikata scans the selection with confusion. “What the hell language is this?”

“I dunno. I got them from these salamander-looking Amanto. They run a small grocery store with goods from their home solar system.”

“I know exactly which ones you’re talking about. The married ones all wear a necklace with a pendant that looks like a tiny version of their spouse.”

“Oh, is that what that is? So, it’s their version of carrying a photograph in a locket? I saw the obasan clutching hers.” Bringing his attention back to drinking, he says, “Let’s try the red one next.”

They each unscrew their bottle and give it a whiff. Hijikata posits, “Smells like pomegranate liqueur, maybe?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Gintoki agrees.

They both send the liquid down the hatch.

Four bottles in, Hijikata has loosened up. He sits on the bed next to Gintoki and freely complains about Sougo’s sadism and Kondou’s stalker tendencies.

Eight bottles in, Hijikata is acting very un-Hijikata-like. He lies back on the bed. “Ahhh, I’m so tired, and it’s freezing outside. I don’t want to walk home. Maybe I’ll just stay here tonight.”

Gintoki hovers over him, studying his alcohol-flushed countenance. He leans in for a kiss, but Hijikata pushes his face away.

“You’re a hundred years too early to be trying that!”

Gintoki smirks, resting his chin on the hands that are keeping him at arm’s length. “Oh? Can you please restate that in bottles of liquor? How many more do you need before I can try again?”

Hijikata rolls out from under him unsteadily with a _humph_ and walks over to the dresser to select the next pair of liquor bottles.

Three more types of liquor are tasted, and Hijikata’s inhibitions are worn thin. He leans over and kisses Gintoki, who eagerly kisses back. Hijikata pulls away far sooner than Gintoki would like, blushing, giggling drunkenly, and asking himself, “What am I doing? I don’t even like you.”

Hijikata giggles some more as he walks over to the dresser. There are only two kinds of liquor left. Pointing at the two varieties in turn, he asks Gintoki, “This one, or this one?”

“Your choice.”

Hijikata considers his options for a moment before making his selection. He brings two bottles over to the bed.

They uncap them and drink them.

“What the fuck? That didn’t even taste like alcohol,” Hijikata observes.

“It wasn’t bad, though; it kind of tasted like sugar water. I want to taste more of it,” Gintoki says smoothly, as he leans over and gives Hijikata another kiss. They’re both pretty wasted at this point, so their tongues move around each other’s mouths sloppily.

A couple minutes in, Gintoki breaks the kiss and remarks groggily, “I’m tired.”

“Yeah,” a drowsy Hijikata concurs.

They both get under the covers and promptly fall asleep.

The entire Shinsengumi waits in the yard for their Vice Chief to send them off for the day’s duties with threats of seppuku. He doesn’t show up. Yamazaki goes to his room, to see if he’s perhaps not feeling well, but the room is empty. No one has seen him since he went out for a drink last night. Kondou assures everyone Hijikata is fine, but he secretly enlists Sougo’s and Yamazaki’s help to find him.

Yamazaki calls around to area hospitals. They all say they have no patients matching Hijikata’s description.

Sougo stops by Hijikata’s usual Thursday night bar, but it’s empty and locked up, as it doesn’t open until noon on Fridays.

An unscrupulous love hotel employee knocks on the door to Gintoki’s and Hijikata’s room, knowing they haven’t checked out yet and hoping to get his hands on their valuables while they’re out. When there’s no answer, he uses his master key to open the door. At first, he panics to see the room occupied. He then laughs at his own good fortune to see both men sleeping soundly and not responding at all to any motions or noise he makes. They’re so far gone, they don’t even stir when he rifles through the pockets of the clothing that’s still on their bodies. He takes their wallets and Hijikata’s cell phone and Shinsengumi ID and leaves.

The front desk staff note that one of the rooms has yet to check out, and at eleven, it’s now an hour past checkout time. They call the room, to see if the occupants would like to pay for additional time, but no one answers. The manager goes to the room and knocks, receiving no response. He uses his key to open the door and finds two men sleeping in the bed and a couple dozen tiny empty bottles of alien liquor strewn throughout the room. He approaches the man who has the least drool running down his face and shakes him gently. “Sir, please, wake up. It’s time for you to check out.”

The man is unresponsive. The manager checks for breathing and a pulse, and everything seems fine. He walks around to the other side of the bed and gently shakes the man with the messy silver hair. “Sir, please, wake up.”

Same story. Breathing and pulse seem normal, but neither man can be woken up. It’s more than a typical case of hotel guests sleeping off a night of drunk sex – for one thing, both men are fully-clothed – so the manager calls an ambulance, and the men are taken to a hospital.

When Gintoki still isn’t up by two in the afternoon, Kagura gets fed up and decides to rouse him. She slides the doors to his room open and finds it empty. Did he find a date last night? Good for him. She assumes he’ll stumble home hung over and broke later.

The hospital staff aren’t immediately able to see anything wrong with the two unconscious men who were brought in by ambulance an hour ago. Unfortunately, these men had no identification on them, so they are forced to simply set them up in beds and wait for someone to come looking for them.

In the afternoon, Sougo goes back to the bar he thinks Hijikata probably went to last night. He shows the owner Hijikata’s picture (with Sougo’s addition of drawn-on devil horns) and asks if the owner saw this man last night.

“Ah, you’re looking for Hijikata-san? I expected him last night, but he never showed up. Is he all right?”

As Sougo walks out, he remarks, “I hope not. Thanks for your help.”

In the middle of the afternoon, Kagura is starting to worry about Gintoki. She calls the Shimuras, but neither Tae nor Shinpachi have seen or heard from him.

By nightfall, even Sougo is worried about Hijikata. He stops by the Yorozuya, thinking maybe Gintoki has knowledge of his whereabouts.

When Kagura answers the door, Sougo asks, “When did danna get a pig?”

She punches him in the chest, he yanks her hair, and they scuffle for a while. She gives up too easily, so he asks, “What’s wrong?”

With a sad pout, she answers, “Gin-chan didn’t come home last night.”

“Hijikata-san didn’t come back last night, either. That can’t be coincidence.”

Scandalized, she gasps. “You don’t think they’re somewhere doing _that,_ do you?”

He wishes he thought it was that simple. “Probably. We’ll let you know when we find them, piggy.”

Gintoki and Hijikata lie unconscious in side-by-side hospital beds.

Suddenly, within seconds of each other, they wake up, groaning in gut pain.

When the doctor comes in to check on them, he greets them with a smile and declares, “Congratulations. You’re pregnant!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise to update this story on each anniversary of the Gintama anime. See everyone 4/4/21!
> 
> Just kidding. I make no promises whatsoever.


	2. Learning the Definition of the Word Episiotomy Might Make You Consider Adopting Instead of Getting Pregnant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Gachapon = onomatopoeia for the “gacha” sound made when you crank handle of a toy vending machine + the “pon” sound of the toy capsule hitting the collection tray; can refer to either the vending machine itself or the toy capsule that comes out of the machine._
> 
> Chapter contains a small amount of surgical gore.

“Congratulations. You’re pregnant!” the doctor says, with a smile, before offering another theory, as if he believes it merits serious consideration, “…or you’re gachapon vending machines.”

Gintoki and Hijikata are in too much pain to voice their confusion. Is the doctor congratulating _them_? If so, what is the doctor talking about? They’re men; they can’t be pregnant, and they’re human and definitely not vending machines.

“Here’s what you’re carrying.” The doctor hands each man an ultrasound photo of what looks like a tiny human child tucked inside one end of an egg that has a seam, just like the toy capsules that come out of vending machines. “You’re lucky you ended up here instead of Oedo Hospital. Most of our staff has experience with Amanto medicine, so we are used to thinking outside the box. Those idiots at Oedo would never have thought to check for pregnancy. Still, we were surprised when we saw the ultrasounds. At first, we thought you each swallowed a gachapon, but we were able to hear their heartbeats. You’re in pain because the eggs are blocking your intestines. We’ll be taking you in for mini-c-sections shortly.”

The pregnant men each run through similar trains of thought. They’re _pregnant_? They’re _both_ pregnant? How?? Even if human men could get pregnant, a human wouldn’t be carrying an _egg_ , for fuck’s sake! What kind of quack doctor would think to check a man for pregnancy? Why would they even consider the possibility that two grown men swallowed gachapon? What is a ‘mini-c-section’? That’s not a real medical procedure!

“This has to be a mistake…” Gintoki mutters.

“Do you have family you’d like us to contact, so they can witness this blessed occasion?”

“NO!!!” Gintoki and Hijikata yell in unison.

“This is your fault!” Hijikata screams, pointing an accusing finger at Gintoki, “What did you do to me while I was drunk?!”

“ _My_ fault?!! I didn’t do anything! We kissed a little, then we fell asleep! Plus, I’m a vending machine too! What did _you_ do to _me_ while _I_ was drunk?!”

The doctor laughs fondly. “Ah, young couples in love.” He then stands and says, “Someone will come for you in a few minutes.”

After a couple minutes, nurses come in and wheel their beds to surgery. Several staff members enter the room shortly thereafter. A tall woman in surgical gear introduces herself. “I’m Onoda-sensei. I’ll be taking care of you today. I do about a hundred c-sections a year, so you’re in good hands… though, your cases are different, in that you are men, and what’s inside you are eggs and not babies. Also, what’s inside you isn’t in your womb, because you are physically incapable of having a womb; it’s in your gastrointestinal system… Anyway, I’m sure everything will be fine. Do you have any questions before we begin?”

“Yeah, are you single?” Gintoki asks, unable to focus on the insane thing that’s happening.

“Dammit, you moron,” Hijikata curses at Gintoki for asking a stupid question, “If we survive this, I’m going to kill you.”

“I’m happily married,” Onoda answers Gintoki’s question.

Hijikata asks a more relevant question. “This is gonna hurt, right? Are you going to knock us out or at least numb us?”

“The bad news is, it will hurt, as we will be cutting through your abdominal wall and small intestine. The other bad news is, it will _really_ hurt; we can’t risk harming the organisms inside the eggs with painkillers or anesthesia. The other other bad news is, we will be cutting through your abdominal muscles and small intestines, so you won’t have a quick recovery time. So, who’s first?”

The men point at each other and say, “Him!”

Onoda puts a finger on her chin, considering whom she should choose, then she closes her eyes and spins in a circle several times. When she stops and opens her eyes, she’s facing Hijikata.

“Aw, fuck me,” he mutters under his breath.

Onoda picks up the patient chart attached to the end of Hijikata’s bed and says, “Oh, that’s right; you gentlemen came in with no identification. What’s your name?”

“What do you mean I had no identification? Where’s my wallet? My phone?”

“I’m sorry; I don’t know.”

He sighs and answers, “My name is Hijikata Toushirou.”

“And your husband’s name?”

“Fucking…We are _not_ married! He’s just a guy I know. His name is Sakata Gintoki.”

“My apologies; I didn’t mean to judge. I will just mention that children tend to be happier when their biological parents are legally married to each other and leave it at that.”

Hijikata rolls his eyes hard.

Onoda makes notes of their names on their charts, puts the charts back on their hooks, walks over to Hijikata, and pulls back the covers. She reaches around the back of his neck and unties his gown. She pulls the gown down, exposing his torso. She disinfects an area of his stomach that he notices is marked in black permanent marker with an X.

When she picks up a scalpel that’s far too large for Hijikata’s liking, he looks toward Gintoki, his eyes practically screaming, _“Help me!”_

Gintoki’s face turns white in fear. That huge scalpel will be used on him next.

Onoda slowly and carefully slices through the X, and Hijikata bites the inside of his cheek, to keep himself from screaming. When blood starts flowing out of the wound, he groans and looks away. An assistant comes over with the scary blood-vacuum thingy they use during surgeries and keeps the floor from turning into a sea of blood. He refuses to look, because he can feel the scalpel slicing deeper and deeper, and he’s sure by now his intestines are falling out of him. Just when he feels like he might pass out from the pain, she says, “Aha!”

He risks looking down. As expected, there’s a mess of bloody entrails sticking out of him. She reaches a hand inside the mess – which, holy fucking shit, that hurts like a motherfucker – and carefully pulls out something covered in bloody innards. She gently wipes it with a wet cloth, revealing an egg approximately the size of a fist. As was seen in the ultrasound image, the egg looks like a gachapon. It has a seam and is a slightly translucent deep red. Maybe it’s not plastic, but it kind of looks like it.

In denial, Gintoki treats the situation like a joke. “Hahahaha, Hijikata-kun…Did you just give birth to a gachapon? Hahahaha! If you get Akumatsu, I’ll give you 300 yen for him. He’s the only character I’m missing from my _Osomatsu-san_ collection. Hahahaha!!”

Hijikata is in too much pain to respond.

Onoda sticks a sensor to the egg. The vitals monitor lights up with a heartrate and temperature.

Gintoki immediately stops laughing, the gravity of the situation having finally sunk in. The egg really contains a living creature.

An assistant shoots Hijikata up with painkillers and administers local anesthesia so they can begin the complicated process of stitching him back up in a way that will allow his intestines to return to their normal function.

The egg’s vitals slowly but steadily drop. Onoda quickly places the egg in a tank of liquid, and the vitals return to where they were.

Damn, that gave Gintoki a scare. He looks at Hijikata, who has tears of pain and fear for his child’s (?) life streaming down his face.

“Until the organism has completely gestated, we’ll keep it in this incubator we rigged up to mimic the temperature and humidity of your intestines,” Onoda explains. She walks over to Hijikata, puts a comforting hand on his shoulder, and asks, “Are you doing all right, Hijikata-san?”

He’s too traumatized to speak. He nods, teary eyes closed.

Onoda makes some notes on Hijikata’s chart, then she walks over to Gintoki. “Are you ready, Sakata-san?”

“No! I’m not!” Gintoki’s panic level is at 267 on a scale of one to ten. “Can’t you just let me die instead? I’m sure Hijikata-kun would be happy to slice my head off and put me out of my misery.”

Ignoring his hysterics, she repeats the process of exposing Gintoki’s belly, disinfecting the area marked with an X, and slowly slicing her way through the layers of skin and muscle between her and his intestines.

He clamps both hands over his mouth and screams, which engages his abdominal muscles, which just got sliced open, putting him in even more pain. He quashes the urge to scream, but a torrent of tears flows down his face. Luckily, the experience with Hijikata must have helped Onoda know what she’s doing, because it’s not long at all before she pulls a dark blue gachapon-looking egg out of Gintoki. She sticks a sensor on it, and another monitor lights up with vitals. She places the egg next to Hijikata’s inside the incubator.

While he’s not thrilled about getting shots and being stitched up, Gintoki is beyond ready for painkillers, so he keeps quiet and doesn’t complain. When Onoda asks if he’s all right, he nods.

Hijikata’s painkillers have kicked in enough to where he can speak again. “So, what’s next? How long do those things have to incubate? When do we find out what the hell was inside us?”

“It’s hard to say. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Do you have any idea when or how you got pregnant?”

Hijikata bites back the urge to scream, _“I’m a man! It’s impossible for me to get pregnant!”_ He shakes his head no.

“What if…” Gintoki chimes in hesitantly, “What if one of the bottles we drank last night had something weird in it?”

Hijikata’s eyebrows go up. Gintoki has a point…

“Last night?” Onoda asks, confused. She corrects him, “You two were brought in three days ago. You were unconscious for at least 72 hours.” Gintoki and Hijikata look at each other, wide-eyed, and Onoda adds, “You drank something weird?”

“…I got paid for a job in Amanto liquor,” Gintoki explains, “or I at least thought it was liquor, but that last one we drank tasted like sugar water, and it made us really sleepy… Shit… There’s no chance that stuff made us p-…,” he can’t bring himself to say the word ‘pregnant,’ “…it couldn’t have done…this, right?”

“So, you guys drank something strange Thursday night?” They nod, and she thinks. She stands up and grabs Gintoki’s chart. She flips to the ultrasound image and studies it for a minute before giving her conclusion. “The size of the organism relative to the egg is similar to the ratio you’d see in a chicken embryo after three-to-four days. If the growth rate is similar, they will hatch in around two-and-a-half weeks.”

Knowing not a damn thing about how eggs work, Gintoki asks, “Are the eggs going to grow?”

“I don’t think so. The eggs should stay the same size, but the embryo inside will grow.”

“So, a tiny human is going to come out of each of those eggs?” Hijikata asks.

“I believe that’s correct. From what I can tell from the ultrasound image, the appearance is that of a tiny four- or five-year-old human child, so it’s possible they will be tiny adults by the time they emerge.”

“Wha…What?!” Hijikata responds. “How can you say that with a straight face? Are you seriously telling a human man that he is the mother of a tiny adult human that will hatch from a gachapon in 17 days? How is that possible?!”

“I’ve found that anything is possible when dealing with Amanto medicine.” She stands and says, “I would like to keep you four for observation overnight, but I see no reason you shouldn’t be able to go home tomorrow. We will lend you the portable vitals monitors and incubator and give you a supply of sterile bath, so you can take the eggs home with you. After they hatch, you can return the monitors and incubator, and we’ll give the hatchlings their first check-ups.”

“…take…home…?” Gintoki is having difficulty grasping the situation.

“A couple times a year, I assist in a birth where the mother is unaware she was pregnant, so I know how difficult it can be to suddenly have parenthood thrust upon you, but don’t worry. You are both strong, and you have each other. I know you’ll be good dads.” She gives them one last smile and walks out.

Neither man speaks for a minute.

“Hijikata-kun?”

“Hmm?”

“We’re not telling anyone the truth, right?”

Hijikata hums in agreement. He wouldn’t tell the truth if he was on his deathbed.

When they – Gintoki and Hijikata, along with their children (?) in the incubator – get taken back to their hospital room, they use the phone in the room to make some dreaded calls.

Gintoki can’t even get a word in edgewise when he calls his place and Shinpachi answers.

“Gin-san! Where are you? Are you all right? Kagura-chan and I have been worried sick about you! Hijikata-san is missing too! Have you seen him? Do you know where he-”

Gintoki has to interrupt. “Shinpachi-kun! I’m fine. Hijikata-kun is also fine. We went out for drinks and accidentally drank some Amanto alcohol that made us sick. We’re spending another night at the hospital-”

Shinpachi interrupts. “Which hospital? What room are you in? We’ll come visit right away-”

Gintoki interrupts again. “No! Don’t bother visiting. I’ll be home tomorrow. See you then. Bye.” He hangs up with an exasperated sigh.

Hijikata has it worse. He calls Shinsengumi HQ, and Kondou answers the phone, wailing mournfully, “Toshi? Toshi?! Please let this be Toshi!”

He considers hanging up, but he feels bad about how worried Kondou is, so he says, “Kondou-san, it’s me.”

Kondou turns into a blubbering mess on the other end of the line. “Oh, Toshi!!! I’ve been so worried about you! Where are you? I’ll come get you right away -”

Hijikata interrupts and tells the same lie Gintoki told Shinpachi. “No! I’m fine. I went out for a drink with Yorozuya, and we accidentally drank some Amanto alcohol that made us sick. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Are you at the hospital? I’ll bring you flowers…no, mayonnaise!”

“No, please, I’m fine, I promise. I’ll see you tomorrow, Kondou-san. Goodbye.” He hangs up before Kondou gets a chance to say anything else.

The drugs have completely kicked in, so they nap for a couple hours.

When they wake up, they awkwardly avoid looking at each other or at the tank containing one red and one blue egg, but after a while, addressing the situation becomes unavoidable. Gintoki breaks the silence. “What’s the plan for tomorrow? I think I’ll be in too much pain to walk home lugging that fucking incubator.”

“You were…planning to take it home with you?” Hijikata asks, cautiously relieved to hear he isn’t going to get stuck with it.

“Well, yeah, Oogushi-kun, unless you want to take it home with you. Do you want the entire Shinsengumi to know you and I are having kids together?”

He definitely doesn’t. “What about China and glasses?”

“Hmm. We’re probably going to have to tell them the truth, but Shinpachi is trustworthy; he won’t tell anyone if we ask him not to. Nobody believes a word that comes from Kagura’s mouth, so we’re fine, even if she spills.”

“I see. I can have Yamazaki pick us up tomorrow. I’ll have him drop you and the incubator off at your place. We can make up a lie or tell him the truth. Either way, I’ll threaten him with seppuku, so he’ll keep quiet.” A minute later, Hijikata asks another question. “What are we going to do after they hatch?”

“Who knows? We’ll have to wait and see. Maybe that crazy doctor is wrong, and we had lizard eggs blocking our intestines.”

Gintoki’s right; they can’t make any decisions until they have more information.


	3. What to Expect When You’re Male and Never Would Have Dreamed You’d Get Knocked Up

Kagura and Shinpachi are delighted when they see the dark blue and deep red eggs Gintoki and Hijikata bring home from the hospital. They have tons of questions that Gintoki refuses to answer until he takes care of his main concern.

He pulls up a loose wood floor panel, drags Sacchan out of her hiding place, and threatens that if she so much as makes a funny look at the eggs or the creatures that will come out of them, he will make her watch as he ties up and whips someone else.

He and Hijikata then address Kagura’s and Shinpachi’s questions, telling them they don’t know how they ended up with eggs in their intestines but that the eggs contain tiny humans that will likely be adults by the time they hatch in two-and-a-half weeks. Kagura and Shinpachi agree to not tell anyone about the eggs.

Despite still being in tons of pain after their ‘mini-c-sections’ two days ago, Hijikata’s and Gintoki’s top priority is finding out how they got ‘pregnant.’ Shinpachi agrees to keep an eye on the eggs and their vitals while Gintoki goes out. Hijikata picks Gintoki up in a squad car, and they drive to the shop owned by the salamander-like Amanto that gave Gintoki the assortment of liquor bottles. Luckily, the young Amanto man, who speaks Japanese, is there this time.

Gintoki describes the events of the past few days to the young Amanto.

As soon as Gintoki mentions the colored eggs, the Amanto stops him. He turns around and speaks to the old Amanto that gave Gintoki the bag of liquor. They converse for a while in their native tongue, with the conversation turning into a somewhat heated disagreement by the end. The young man turns back around and tells Gintoki and Hijikata, “I have to apologize on behalf of my grandfather. In addition to the two dozen bottles of liquor I told him to give you in payment for the job, he also gave you two bottles of _ga cha pon_ solution.”

“‘Gachapon solution’?” Gintoki repeats, confused. “What’s that?”

“In our language, _ga_ means sacred, _cha_ means ceremony, and _pon_ means marriage. My grandfather has seen you two around town together before, and he thought you were courting. He thought you could use the solution when you get married. I’m sorry; he was trying to be helpful. He didn’t understand that you two are just acquaintances.”

Gintoki and Hijikata exchange startled deer-in-the-headlights looks, silently asking each other, _‘Did we accidentally get married when we drank the solution?!’_

The young Amanto explains further, “A few weeks before _ga cha pon_ , a married-couple-to-be exchange genetic material, usually a layer of shed skin. Each of them pours a bottle of _ga cha pon_ solution into a small bowl and adds to it their future marriage partner’s genetic material. The bowl is kept in a warm, humidified cupboard for three days. Over those three days, the solution causes an egg-like shell to form around the solution/genetic-material mix. The egg is carried, protected, and kept warm with body heat throughout the couple’s waking and sleeping hours until their _ga cha pon._ During those weeks inside the egg, the solution creates small likenesses of the partners, called _toy,_ based on the genetic material. Part of the ceremony includes opening the eggs and placing the _toy_ on necklace pendants that the spouses then wear for life.”

He concludes, “ _Toy_ are made from genetic material, but they are never alive. It’s very strange that yours have heartbeats. Your eggs are also several times larger than ours, which aren’t much bigger than the pendants you’ve seen my grandparents wearing, so I think what you’re experiencing is nothing like what we normally see. I’m sorry I can’t be more help, but I’ve never heard of anyone outside of our race using _ga cha pon_ solution.”

Gintoki and Hijikata leave feeling defeated. They brought this upon themselves. They should have known better than to drink mystery bottles of liquid. They swallowed the solution, which picked up their own genetic material from their bodies and genetic material from the other’s saliva, which they were sloppily swapping. The solution then formed the eggs inside their digestive tracts.

It’s terrifying to confirm that the eggs contain creatures created from their own genetic material. It wasn’t so scary when they thought they might be carrying baby birds or turtles, but this makes it feel like they’re really having _children_. There’s so much that has yet to be seen. Is it safe to assume they’re boys? Will there be two Hijikata clones, two Gintoki clones, or one of each? They’ll find out once they hatch.

Three days after they have ‘mini-c-sections,’ their stolen belongings – Gintoki’s and Hijikata’s wallets, minus the cash, and Hijikata’s cell phone and Shinsengumi ID – are recovered from the work locker of a former love hotel employee. Hijikata is relieved to not have to commit seppuku for losing his Shinsengumi ID.

After a week, it has come to feel completely normal to Gintoki to see a liquid-filled incubator containing one blue and one red gachapon sitting on top of the short bookcase in his living room. Kagura and Shinpachi have been cooperative in not telling anyone about the eggs. Actually, the kids are excited about the eggs, volunteering to help any way they can. They take turns changing out the incubator’s sterile bath. It’s kind of cute the way the kids and even Sadaharu are protective of the eggs.

Hijikata stops by two or three times a week, to check on the eggs. When the dark red egg that contains his child (?) isn’t right in front of his face, it doesn’t feel real. Every time he sees it, he’s reminded of the insanity that occurred, spending three days unconscious in the hospital and waking up to the news that he was ‘pregnant.’

After two weeks, Kagura and Shinpachi are impatiently awaiting the new arrivals. They think up potential names for the babies (?). They list out what the babies (?) will need and where they might find supplies for newborns who are small enough to fit in eggs the size of fists. They discuss the merits of Gintoki and Hijikata getting married.

The two dads(/moms?)-to-be wish the new arrivals would never come. Neither of them feels ready to take on the burdens of parenthood. They would rather chew their own feet off than discuss names, clothes, cribs, midnight feedings, diaper changes, sending kids to school, saving for college expenses, attending their kids’ weddings, and seeing their grandchildren’s faces. And they* definitely, for sure aren’t interested in marriage.

_*[Hijikata is interested in marriage, but he is violently opposed to marrying Gintoki. His dark, threatening black aura comes out whenever it’s mentioned in front of him. Gintoki has never been interested in marriage, so he gives the subject no thought.]_

Onoda, the doctor who did the ‘mini-c-sections,’ said two-and-a-half weeks until the eggs hatch, but three full weeks have now passed. Everyone is waiting on pins and needles for the new arrivals. Hijikata calls the hospital, and Onoda assures him not to worry. Her initial estimate may have been off, as this is the first time she’s seen human males carrying offspring or humans of any gender bearing eggs. She says as long as the vitals still look good, everything should be fine, but she tells him he can call back daily until they hatch, if it makes him feel better.

By day twenty-five, Kagura and Shinpachi are tired of waiting around, only for nothing to happen. As far as January weather goes, today’s weather is perfect, so they take Sadaharu out for the day. Gintoki and Hijikata are beyond anxious. They stay inside, trying to keep their minds off the eggs, but they each get up and look in the incubator at least a few times every hour.

After lunch, Gintoki goes into his room for a nap, leaving Hijikata in the living room by himself. He passively watches TV with the sound turned down low, simply as a distraction. He hears a small noise, but he discounts it as nothing. Gintoki’s place is in a fairly loud area, with noise constantly coming from the street or the bar downstairs. However, when he hears the noise again, it definitely sounds like it came from somewhere in the living room. He mutes the TV and listens hard. He hears a _crack._

He gets up and looks in the incubator. The seam on the blue egg – the egg that came out of Gintoki – is starting to split open. Hijikata goes to Gintoki’s room and slides the doors open. “Wake up, Yorozuya. You’re about to be a father.”

With his heart thumping madly, Gintoki gets up and goes out to the incubator. Sure enough, the blue egg is starting to open up, but so is the red one. “You’re about to be a father too, Hijikata-kun.”

The blue egg’s seam opens even more, and two tiny human hands poke out and start pushing the two sides of the egg apart.

Gintoki comments quietly, “Holy shit.”

Two tiny human hands break through the red egg as well. Both children (?) make slow but steady progress in getting their eggs open.

The inhabitant of the blue egg makes it out first, climbing on top of the remnants of his egg, to get himself out of the bath in which the eggs incubated. Gintoki is speechless. The egg that came out of him contained a seven-centimeter-tall version of the man standing next to him. A lot of weird shit has happened in his life, but none so weird as having extracted from his intestines an egg, which hatched a few weeks later, bringing a miniature adult Hijikata Toushirou into the world.

Less than a minute later, the red egg’s former resident breaks free. A seven-centimeter-tall version of Gintoki climbs on top of his egg. Hijikata can’t imagine that he will ever experience anything as strange as giving birth to a miniature adult Sakata Gintoki.

Hijikata and Gintoki look at each other, like they each expect the other to know what to do next. They’re both wrong, because neither of them has a clue.

“Maybe…get them out of the incubator?” Gintoki guesses.

Hijikata nods. He takes the lid off the incubator and reaches in, holding a hand out flat next to each of the miniature men. He hopes they understand what he wants them to do.

They catch his drift, apparently, because they climb on. He carefully lifts them out and sets his hand-platforms down on top of the bookcase. The two tiny men step off his hands.

Still lost, Gintoki looks at Hijikata and asks, “Now what do we do?”

“Hell if I know!” This experience is very stressful, and Hijikata has half a mind to ream Gintoki for asking a dumb question, but it’s hard to take his eyes or attention off his and Gintoki’s children (?), who are sitting on the bookshelf in the nude, huddled together. It’s unnerving to see someone who looks so much like himself getting cozy with someone who looks so much like Yorozuya.

“What?” Gintoki defensively demands of his miniature self, who has taken to glaring angrily at him.

Suddenly, tiny Gintoki stands up and takes a running leap toward big Gintoki, landing on his left forearm and clinging to his kimono sleeve. Tiny Gintoki makes his way down to the sleeve’s hem and starts yanking with all his might on the cloth.

“What are you doing, asshole? You’re going to rip it!” Gintoki says to his tiny self. He sounds annoyed, but really, he’s scared for the little guy’s life, dangling from his sleeve like that. He holds still, so as to not accidentally fling tiny Gintoki off.

Eventually, tiny Gintoki gets what he wants. The worn, old cloth of Gintoki’s sleeve begins ripping.

Gintoki says to Hijikata, “Hey, make your kid stop destroying my clothes!”

“I think I know what he’s trying to do,” Hijikata comments, indicating with his head for Gintoki to look down at tiny Toushirou, who is sitting in a ball, hugging his knees and shivering.

Now Gintoki gets it. His tiny self is trying to take care of his cold, wet friend. “Ok, stop, I’ll take care of him,” he tells his tiny self, slowly moving his arm to set tiny Gintoki down. Tiny Gintoki cooperates, stepping onto the shelf. Big Gintoki takes his kimono off entirely, rips off several pieces, and sets the makeshift blankets on top of the shelf.

Tiny Gintoki wraps tiny Hijikata’s body in one of the cloths, quickly dries his own hair and body with and wraps himself in a second cloth, then uses a third cloth to dry tiny Hijikata’s hair for him. Now mostly dry, the two tiny men huddle together again. Gintoki doesn’t know if they’re still cold or if they just like each other a lot.

“I’m going to call Onoda-sensei,” Hijikata says, pulling out his phone.

“Put her on speaker,” Gintoki says.

When they tell Onoda the eggs hatched, she congratulates them and asks how the new arrivals are doing. She sounds unreasonably excited to hear each of their eggs contained the other’s miniature adult clone. She wants to see them in person. She asks if they can bring them to the hospital for their check-ups today, as she will be busy for the next few days delivering actual human babies via actual c-section performed on actual human women.

Gintoki and Hijikata agree to be there in an hour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For my fellow people who don’t speak metric, the boys are just shy of three inches tall.


	4. Baby Names Should Be Chosen Well in Advance of the Due Date

Shortly after tiny Gintoki and tiny Hijikata hatch, big Gintoki and big Hijikata call Onoda, the doctor who performed their mini-c-sections. She asks them to bring the new arrivals to the hospital for their first check-ups.

Once Hijikata and Gintoki hang up, they realize they have a couple of problems.

Problem number one: The new arrivals are naked. Kagura and Shinpachi bought a selection of doll clothes, but the clothing is way too big. These guys are smaller than one might expect, if one foolishly had expectations about their size.

Gintoki has an epiphany. He once crashed a college party where the theme was ‘Greek life.’ The dress code for the party was something called a ‘toga,’ which Gintoki found out is simply a bedsheet wrapped around the body, with two ends tied over one shoulder. He rips off more fabric segments from his kimono and, with some difficulty convincing little Gintoki he’s not doing anything weird and some difficulty tying tiny knots, dresses the boys.

Problem number two: They have no idea how to transport the new arrivals. They’re so damn small! Not an hour ago, Gintoki saw a cockroach that was bigger than the two of them combined. It’s not like stores sell car seats that accommodate seven-centimeter-tall newborns.

He has another epiphany. He goes to the kitchen and gets a clean, tall-sided cedar bento box. He gets a clean, fluffy washcloth from the bathroom and lines the bento box’s interior. The main concern is having them jostle around too much in transit. With this, they’ll have a comfortable surface to sit on, and if they get tossed around a little, they’ll bump up against soft walls. He shows his creation to Hijikata, who nods in approval. Gintoki could swear Hijikata almost smiles.

Gintoki puts on a new kimono, then the four of them load up Hijikata’s squad car and go to the hospital, with Hijikata driving, Gintoki in the passenger’s seat, holding the bento box full of small humans, and the incubator and vitals monitors in the back seat.

Onoda is fascinated by the new arrivals. She asks Gintoki and Hijikata for a detailed account of everything that happened since the eggs started cracking open, and she asks a million questions. Did the eggs break open along the seams? Have the new arrivals made any noise? Do they appear to possess adult-level intelligence? etc.

They in turn ask her a million questions. Will they grow? How big will they end up being? What should they feed them? Will they ever speak? Will they need to use the toilet?

She says if she had to guess, it’s possible they don’t eat, at least not much. They aren’t acting even a little bit hungry right now, as tiny Hijikata is swinging from the exam room sphygmomanometer’s dangling cuff inflation tube while tiny Gintoki slides down and climbs back up the porcelain sink’s walls repeatedly, like they’re extreme playground slides. Her advice is: if they act hungry, feed them. Whether they have normal excretive functions will depend on whether they eat.

She doesn’t want to guess whether they’ll grow. Upon hatching, some Earth animals, such as fuzzy yellow ducklings, look very different from their adult counterparts. Others, such as snake hatchlings, look rather similar to their adult counterparts, except small. She concludes her exam by admitting she knows the answers to none of their questions but assures them they’ll figure everything out as they go.

After Onoda leaves, a medical assistant named Iwase enters and takes as many readings as he can. He borrows a little plastic fifteen-centimeter ruler from the hospital billing staff. Tiny Gintoki and tiny Hijikata are reluctant to do anything Iwase wants, until they see Gintoki demonstrate. He stands with his back against the wall and allows Iwase to measure his height, to show them what’s going on. Once he does that, it’s not hard to coax them into standing on the countertop with their backs against the backsplash, so Iwase can measure their heights. They are each 74 millimeters tall.

Iwase borrows the scale the hospital’s pharmacy uses to make small, precise measurements while compounding medication. Again, Gintoki demonstrates the idea, by stepping on the scale in the corner of the room.

“You need to lay off the sweets. We’re the same height, but you outweigh me by four kilograms,” Hijikata points out.

While persuading the little ones to step onto the pharmacy scale one at a time, Gintoki retorts, “It’s all muscle weight.”

Tiny Hijikata weighs 13.3 grams; tiny Gintoki weighs 13.9 grams.

After Gintoki allows Iwase to stick a sensor on his arm, tiny Gintoki and tiny Hijikata allow Iwase to place the same sensors they used to take pulse and temperature readings from the eggs on them. Both readings are higher than you’d want to see from a normal human, but smaller mammals tend to have relatively fast heartrates and high body temperatures.

Iwase can’t think of a way to measure their blood pressure or take a blood sample, but he still got several readings, so he calls it good.

Hijikata’s phone rings. Kondou is calling, so he steps out of the room to take the call.

Iwase then asks Gintoki, “Are you ready to name them? If so, I can issue birth certificates.”

It’s Hijikata’s fault he doesn’t get to have a say in their naming, as he never once piped up with an opinion during the million times Kagura and Shinpachi discussed the topic, and now that the time has come to name them, he’s not in the room. Gintoki answers, “Sure.”

“Unfortunately,” Iwase explains, “since your children are clearly not regular humans, nor are they Amanto, I have to list their species as ‘unknown.’ This means they will neither be considered citizens of Edo nor accorded the same rights as humans or recognized Amanto species living in Edo. You will not be able to obtain government assistance for their care, they will not be allowed to attend public schools, and as they get older, they will not be able to obtain legal paying work and won’t be eligible to vote, serve in the military, or run for public office.”

That fucking sucks, not because Gintoki thought he was going to get money for these guys or that one of them would grow up to be Edo’s smallest-ever shogun, but because it just doesn’t seem right. He’s human and an Edo citizen, and so is Hijikata, and these two are their kids. Doesn’t that make them human and Edo citizens too? Apparently not. It’s not Iwase’s fault, though, and Gintoki is grateful he was so straightforward in telling it like it is. He proverbially bites his tongue and nods in acknowledgement.

“Also, just so you know, since these weren’t traditional births resulting from the union of a mother and a father, the certificate will list whichever of you carried the egg as ‘primary parent’ and the other as ‘secondary parent.’”

Gintoki is happy to hear that both he and Hijikata will be listed on both of their tiny selves’ birth certificates. “Cool. I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Yes. Changes had to be made to the laws regarding birth registration, to accommodate Amanto customs and biology. For example, one Amanto species is genderless, and it takes three of them to asexually produce a brood of offspring,” he explains. He then asks, “So, for the one with dark hair, who hatched from the blue egg you were carrying, you will be listed as ‘primary parent,’ and Hijikata-san will be listed as ‘secondary parent.’ Would you like to give him your family name?”

“Yes.”

“And his given name?”

“Toushirou.”

“All right; Sakata Toushirou it is. For the one with the silver hair, who hatched from the red egg Hijikata-san carried, Hijikata-san will be listed as ‘primary parent,’ and you will be listed as ‘secondary parent.’ Do you want him to have Hijikata-san’s family name?”

“Yes.”

“And his given name?”

“Gintoki.”

“Hijikata Gintoki. Got it. Just to be sure, they hatched today, correct?”

“Yes.”

“What time for each?”

They kind of lost track of time while they were busy watching the eggs crack open, but it was around 1:30 in the afternoon, he thinks. “13:30 for Toushirou; 13:31 for Gintoki.”

“Great. Let me print out the birth certificates. I’ll be right back.”

While Iwase is gone, Hijikata comes back and sits down again. “What did I miss?”

Slumping in his chair, Gintoki sighs and crosses his arms, which tiny Hijikata then chases tiny Gintoki across, like big Gintoki’s arms are some kind of fleshy bridge. “Apparently, our children aren’t human, much less Edo citizens. They have no rights.”

The news doesn’t make Hijikata happy. He has seen unrecognized Amanto species treated unfairly by the government. He looks over at the tiny person who looks like him, who is currently perched on big Gintoki’s shoulder, about to jump across to his shoulder. He can’t disagree that they aren’t quite human, and they definitely aren’t Amanto. However, that doesn’t mean their being branded ‘non-human’ sits right with him.

Iwase returns, with two pieces of paper. He tries to hand the papers to Gintoki, but Hijikata swipes them first. He examines them for one second each, then chews Gintoki out. “Hijikata Gintoki and Sakata Toushirou?! _That’s_ what you named them?!”

“Hey, look,” Gintoki stretches his arm out, so the boys can use it as a bridge from him to the countertop, while offering his justification, “it was either I name them now or Kagura names them when we take them home, and you’ve heard the things she wants to name them.”

Changing topics before Hijikata and Gintoki argue over names further, Iwase points out, “Did you know that their birthday is exactly halfway between your birthdays? Today, January 22, is 104 days after October 10, and since this is a leap year, it’s 104 days before May 5. I’m really good with numbers and dates, and I noticed that while I was putting together the birth certificates.”

Iwase’s plan to diffuse the tension works. Gintoki’s and Hijikata’s shoulders both relax.

“Oh, also,” Iwase continues, “Onoda-sensei will be covering the medical bills from your hospital stays, surgeries, and today’s visit. She’s not just scientifically interested in Gintoki-chan and Toushirou-chan; she genuinely likes them and both of you and wants only the best for all four of you.”

“No, we couldn’t…” Hijikata starts to object, but Gintoki puts one hand over his mouth and one on the back of his head, to shut him up.

Gintoki says graciously, “Please tell Onoda-sensei thank you very much for everything she’s done, including this, on behalf of me, Hijikata-kun, and the boys.”

Iwase smiles. “I will. Good luck to you guys. Bring them in anytime; we’d love to see how they’re doing.”

“Thank you, Iwase-san,” Gintoki says. Once Iwase leaves, Gintoki relinquishes his grasp on Hijikata’s head and reasons, “Did you see the hospital bill for your three-night stay and surgery? Can you really afford to pay it?”

Hijikata sighs. Gintoki is right. “Yeah, I saw it, and no, I can’t afford to pay it.”

“Accept help sometimes, you stubborn cop.”

Hijikata scoffs. “As if you have talking room.”

“Maybe we’ll both get better about accepting help, now that we have children.” As soon as the words leave Gintoki’s mouth, they come back and hit him like a ton of bricks. He … has … _children (plural!)_ … with Hijikata! Sure, they aren’t normal children (they’re only a few hours old, but they’re currently running around on the countertop, fake battling each other with cotton swabs), but still… It’s starting to feel very real.

Hijikata is thinking the same thing. It wasn’t real until he saw birth certificates listing him as a _parent_.

When Kagura and Shinpachi get back to Gintoki’s place after their day out with Sadaharu, they momentarily panic when they see that the incubator is gone. However, Gintoki and Hijikata are sitting on opposite couches, the latter reading and the former watching TV, like nothing is wrong.

“Gin-san, where are the eggs?”

Gintoki looks around the room until he spots his children. He points toward his tall bookshelf. “Check the middle shelf.”

Kagura and Shinpachi approach the tall bookshelf and see two tiny men, who look just like the larger men sitting on the couches, chasing each other around on the shelf.

Kagura runs over to Gintoki and leaps on him, hugging him excitedly. “Congratulations, Gin-chan! He looks just like you!”

Gintoki pushes Kagura off and points at Hijikata. “The one that looks like me is _his_.”

Shinpachi congratulates Hijikata, saying, “Congratulations, Hijikata-san. What did you name them?”

“ _I_ didn’t name them anything.” Hijikata points at Gintoki. “ _He_ named both of them while I stepped out to take an important work phone call.”

Hijikata and Gintoki both childishly _humph_ and cross their arms instead of continuing to childishly point at each other.

Answering Shinpachi’s question, Gintoki says, “The one that looks like me is named Hijikata Gintoki, and the one that looks like Oogushi-kun is named Sakata Toushirou.”

Shinpachi gives a disappointed sigh. “Gin-san, that’s too confusing.”

“No, it’s not!” Kagura says cheerfully. “We can call them Gin-tan and Toshi-tan!”

Sadaharu comes over and barks, giving his approval of the nomenclature. Riding on his back are two tiny men in togas.

Later in the evening, Shinpachi goes home, albeit reluctantly; he was enjoying watching Gin-tan and Toshi-tan play. Hijikata goes home even more reluctantly, leaving his children in the care of their less-responsible parent. He emphasizes no fewer than three times for Gintoki to call if anything happens.

Gintoki pushes him out the door with a dismissive promise, “Yes, yes, I will call their mommy if anything happens.”

Around the same time as Kagura and Sadaharu start getting tired, so do Gin-tan and Toshi-tan. There’s still plenty of fabric left from the kimono Gintoki destroyed to make their towels/blankets and togas earlier, so he uses it to make a little several-layered ‘futon’ and a ‘blanket.’ He even rolls up small pieces of fabric for them to use as ‘pillows.’ These two are thick as thieves, so he’s sure they won’t mind sharing a futon.

He’s right. As soon as the bedding is laid out on top of the short bookshelf where the incubator used to be, they come over, lie down under the covers, and fall asleep.

Seeing that the boys are sleeping soundly, Kagura and Sadaharu go to sleep as well. Gintoki watches the boys sleep for a solid half-hour before finally going to bed himself.

Gintoki wakes up in the middle of the night, worried about the boys. For one thing, they ate and drank nothing today. Onoda said they might not need to, but he doesn’t feel comfortable assuming they don’t. He gets up, fills a saucer with water, as it’s the only receptacle he can think of that’s short enough for the boys to reach into, and sets it on the other side of the top of the bookshelf where the boys are sleeping.

They’re now lying embarrassingly close, with Toshi-tan’s head resting on Gin-tan’s shoulder and his arm across Gin-tan’s chest, but they look like they’re sleeping well. Gintoki can see their tiny chests rise and fall with each breath. He smiles like a proud dad and goes back to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For my fellow people who don’t speak metric, Gin-tan and Toshi-tan are each just shy of three inches tall and weigh just under half an ounce (1/32 of a pound). Hijikata teases Gintoki about a nine-pound weight difference.
> 
> For my fellow people who don’t speak Japanese, a reminder that the _-tan_ suffix is used to refer to people who are too cute even for the already-diminutive _-chan_ suffix.


	5. Your First Week as a New Parent Will Render Any Books You’ve Read about Child-Raising Worthless

The ways in which new parents baby-proof their homes vary, but they typically include putting dangerous items on high shelves, covering electrical outlets, and locking cabinet doors.

Gintoki’s baby-proofing measures are different. He affixed one end of a length of twine to the top of each piece of furniture in his living room, with the other end of the length of twine dangling down to the floor. He also fixed small wood planks across the gaps between adjacent furniture, to serve as bridges. Both measures are intended to keep the boys from jumping from one piece of furniture to another, or from a shelf to the floor, and scaring Gintoki half to death.

Kagura is dying to tell the whole world about Gin-tan’s and Toshi-tan’s existence. Gintoki reminds her there are plenty of bad people in this world who might want to hurt or exploit the boys, the way people exploited her when she arrived on Earth. His argument convinces her to keep her lips zipped.

Gintoki doesn’t know if the boys sweat, but they haven’t bathed since they hatched yesterday, and he assumes they could use a cleaning. He approaches them as they run back and forth across one of his furniture bridges. They stop running and look at him, curious to know what he wants. He raises an arm, tucks his head down toward his armpit, and takes an exaggerated whiff. He then makes a disgusted face at the smell.

The boys look at each other, alarmed by the notion _they_ might smell bad. They each mimic Gintoki’s actions, including the disgusted face.

“You want to smell nice? Follow me.” He motions for them to follow, and he walks to the bathroom.

They climb down a length of twine and follow him into the strange room they’ve never seen before.

Gintoki fills a small cedar bento box with warm water and sticks a finger in it. This encourages the boys to check out the little tub. They stick their hands in the water and make faces that say it’s the perfect temperature.

Gintoki peels off his clothing, and the boys do the same, pulling their togas off over their heads. They then get in the tiny tub. Gintoki uses a fingernail to carve out a sliver of bar soap for them to use. Following Gintoki’s actions, the boys sit in their tiny tub and wash themselves. They seem to conclude on their own that it’s easier for them to take turns washing each other’s hair and backs. After their bath, the boys towel off using more torn-up kimono pieces.

The next day, when Gintoki comes out to the living room with a towel tied around his waist, the boys know it’s bath time again. Yesterday’s process is repeated, with the boys bathing in their tiny tub while Gintoki pretends he has always had a good habit of bathing daily.

Day four of Gin-tan’s and Toshi-tan’s lives outside their eggs brings their parents their first real challenge.

Gintoki is awoken in the morning by a frantically panicking Kagura.

“Gin-chan, there’s something wrong with Toshi-tan and Gin-tan!”

Her panic is quadrupled within Gintoki, who immediately gets up to see what’s going on. Usually, the boys are up long before he is, running around like madmen, jumping and swinging here and there, but this morning, they’re lethargically lying awake in bed, looking like they’re uninterested in moving. Gintoki’s first thought is to call his co-parent. Hijikata answers, and Gintoki says only one sentence before hanging up. “Get your ass over here, right now!”

Hijikata arrives five minutes later. When he sees the state of his children, the panic passes on to him. He gives Gintoki a helpless look and asks, “What do we do?”

Gintoki shakes his head anxiously, indicating he’s at least as lost as Hijikata.

Hijikata proposes the only idea that comes to mind, which is to call the doctor who performed their ‘mini-c-sections.’ “Should we call Onoda-sensei?”

Gintoki nods. He doesn’t know why he didn’t think of that. His brain is filled only with worry.

Hijikata calls the hospital and asks for Onoda, but he’s informed that she’s performing a c-section. Thinking fast, Hijikata asks if Iwase, Onoda’s medical assistant, is available. Thankfully, he is. Hijikata puts Iwase on speaker.

“Good morning, Hijikata-san. How are you? How are my favorite human hatchlings?”

Ignoring the first question, Hijikata says, “There’s something wrong with them.”

“Ok.” Iwase sounds calm on the surface, but with an undercurrent of worry. “Please tell me what’s going on with them.”

Hijikata describes the boys’ usual behavior in the morning, compared to how they are now.

“Do they have any symptoms of illness, such as coughing, sneezing, vomiting, or diarrhea? Do they appear to be in pain? Or are they just lethargic?”

Taking another look at the boys, Hijikata answers, “Just lethargic.”

“Do they drink water?”

Gintoki chimes in. “I leave them fresh water every day, but I’ve never seen them drink any.” He asks Hijikata and Kagura, “Have you guys?”

“No,” says Hijikata.

“No,” answers Kagura.

“Yes,” adds a third unseen voice. A cupboard door slides open. Sacchan climbs out and says, “They drink water a couple times during the day and once during the night, usually.”

Iwase hears Sacchan’s voice and assumes she was intended to be part of the conversation. He asks, “When was the last time you saw them drink water?”

“Normally, they get up around 3:00 a.m., drink a little water, and go back to bed, but they didn’t do that this morning. The last time they drank water was while everyone else was eating dinner, around 7:00 p.m. last night.”

“Ok. Their last water was fairly recent, so they probably aren’t severely dehydrated,” Iwase thinks out loud, then he asks, “Do they eat?”

Everyone looks to Sacchan for the answer.

“No.”

Iwase continues to think out loud. “Maybe they got by for a few days on the nutrients from your digestive tracts that wound up in the eggs with them, but now they need a recharge.” He unknowingly asks perhaps the stupidest question ever. “Do you have any sugar handy?”

“Yes,” four voices answer in unison.

“Dissolve one part sugar into four parts water and see if you can get them to drink a little. I’ll stay on the line, just in case.”

Gintoki is all over it. He goes to the kitchen and mixes fifteen milliliters of his precious white sugar into sixty milliliters of water, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. He’s glad Kagura and Shinpachi bought two dollhouse tea sets before the boys hatched. This set has a very European look, with a pink rose painted on the side of each piece. He fills two of the set’s cups and brings them out to the living room.

Making sure Gin-tan is watching, Gintoki pretends to drink from one of the tiny cups himself. He then coaxes Gin-tan into sitting up in bed. He holds the cup for Gin-tan, as it’s about twice the size a cup should be, proportionate to Gin-tan’s size, and gets him to drink. Gin-tan is wary at first, but then he gulps the nectar down greedily, polishing off the whole cup in one go. He immediately acts energized and like he feels better.

Gin-tan is the one who gets Toshi-tan to sit up in bed. Gintoki holds the second cup while Toshi-tan drinks. He too immediately gains energy. Within a minute, both tiny men stretch their arms over their heads, like they’re just waking up for the day, and get out of bed.

“I think that did the trick,” Hijikata tells Iwase.

“Good. Glad to hear it.” Iwase sounds relieved too.

“How often should we feed them?” Hijikata asks.

“We don’t have much history to go off of, but given that they made it through three days on what was in the eggs with them, I would feed them every two or three days. Of course, you should adjust the schedule if you deem it necessary. Also, we can’t be sure what else their bodies need, aside from the occasional calories. If they’re like regular humans, they’ll need protein and various vitamins and minerals, but they’re about the size of some species of birds that live off of nectar. If they start acting lethargic again, or if they look like they’re losing weight, please call Onoda-sensei or me right away.”

“Sounds good. Thank you very much for your help, Iwase-san,” Hijikata says.

“Thanks, nurse man!” Kagura interjects.

“Yes, thank you,” Gintoki echoes.

“You’re very welcome. Goodbye.”

Gintoki and Hijikata are both tempted to toss Sacchan’s ass out on the street for her stalker behavior, but they might have been in real trouble today, if not for her knowledge of their children’s routine. For now, they reluctantly thank her for her help and tacitly allow her to stay.

Finding out that the boys drink water gets Gintoki thinking: Does that mean they also pee? He has never seen them do it, but they must, right? He sniffs their ‘bed,’ and it smells like his destroyed kimono. They must not wet the bed.

After thinking about it for a while, he wonders, do those little shitheads piss in the bath? He bets they do.

That evening, before the boys climb into their bento box bathtub, Gintoki makes sure they’re watching as he pees into the drain in the bathroom’s floor. Gin-tan and Toshi-tan watch, and then they nod enthusiastically at each other, as if agreeing they’ve just witnessed the most brilliant act ever performed. They mimic Gintoki, urinating into the drain. The amount of urine that comes out of them is less than what Gintoki accidentally dribbles onto his boxers every time he puts his dick away after taking a leak. Still, he would rather they not soak in piss-water baths. He hopes they will pee into the drain going forward.

After a few days of using body soap on the boys’ hair, it’s clear that won’t work long-term. Gin-tan’s hair is completely wild. His face expresses his frustration at not being able to get his fingers through his own hair for the tangles. Toshi-tan’s hair isn’t even a little bit silky. His v-shaped bangs hang limply on his forehead in stringy clumps. Gintoki is all too sympathetic of the boys’ hair issues. He calls Hijikata and asks him to bring samples of whatever he uses on his hair. Hijikata drops off travel-size versions of his shampoo and conditioner. Despite being small, the bottles are half-again the boys’ heights.

The next time Gintoki and the boys bathe, he holds the dollop of curl-care shampoo he’s about to use to clean his own hair in front of Toshi-tan. Having watched Gintoki bathe a few times, Toshi-tan seems to understand what the substance is for. He scoops a little bit off the dollop and uses it to clean his friend’s hair. Gintoki and Toshi-tan repeat the process with Gintoki’s detangling, flyaway-control conditioner. Toshi-tan nods his head in approval at the way his fingers easily work the conditioner through Gin-tan’s hair.

Gintoki squirts small amounts of Hijikata’s straight-hair-care shampoo and ‘smooth and sleek’ conditioner onto his hand, and Gin-tan uses them on Toshi-tan’s hair. Later that day, Gintoki knows Toshi-tan’s hair issues are solved when he catches Gin-tan running his fingers through Toshi-tan’s hair. The silky v-shaped bangs fall perfectly back into place when Gin-tan is done being alarmingly lovey-dovey.

In advance of their next baths, Gintoki finds a use for the second of the two dollhouse tea sets he owns. He now has four bamboo-patterned porcelain dollhouse teacups in his bathroom, two filled with shampoo and two filled with conditioner. A dollhouse saucer sits next to the row of cups, serving as a place for the boys to store their sliver of bar soap.

Clothing and bedding fairly quickly become issues as well. The little knots tied at the boys’ shoulders, to keep the togas on, often come undone as the boys use Gintoki’s living room as their personal jungle gym. Sections of threadbare kimono hardly make for sturdy clothing or bedding. As they have no sewn hems, they fall to pieces when Shinpachi runs them through the laundry.

Kagura and Shinpachi accept the assignment of thoroughly researching solutions for clothing and furniture. The best solution they find is doll clothing and furniture, and it’s not a great solution. No doll clothes will fit the boys. Most of it is made for dolls three or more times the boys’ heights. Dollhouse furniture is too large. It’s typically 1/12 scale, and the boys are 1/20 the height of their larger counterparts.

When Gintoki and Hijikata discuss the issue, Hijikata offers a partial solution. “This may seem surprising, given how incompetent he can be at life in general, but Yamazaki has a gift for sewing.”

Gintoki agrees to read Yamazaki in on their secret. Since he gave them a ride home from the hospital after their surgeries, he already knows they brought eggs and an incubator home, and if he has kept quiet thus far, he can probably be trusted with the rest of the truth, especially if Hijikata reiterates his threat of ordering him to commit seppuku if he ever tells anyone.

Yamazaki gasps lightly when he sees what came out of the eggs he chauffeured home from the hospital. “It’s a tiny Vice Chief…and a tiny Yorozuya’s danna…”

Before anyone mentions the arts and crafts projects they’d like him to undertake, he asks while examining the boys’ attire, “Vice Chief, why do you have them dressed in rags?”

Hijikata doesn’t dignify the question with a response; he just frowns angrily at the back of Yamazaki’s head.

Yamazaki regards the boys while they play, muttering to himself about which articles of clothing he thinks he would or would not be capable of making. Yukata and obi would be easy; undergarments and footwear would be more of a challenge.

Pulling a tailor’s tape measure from his inside jacket pocket, Yamazaki turns around and asks, “Vice Chief, may I please take their measurements?”

“Why do you carry that around with you?!” Hijikata demands.

“Anytime a new guy starts, the Chief sends him to me to get his uniform,” Yamazaki explains, “I’m not just going to guess what sizes someone wears. I would hate to have anyone stepping on their pants because they’re too long or looking ridiculous because their pants are too short; and we all know what happens to a character’s popularity ranking if their pants fall down. The only way to get the sizing right is to take detailed measurements.”

Gintoki answers Yamazaki’s original question. “If you demonstrate on one of us what you’re going to do to them, they’ll probably let you.”

“Ah, thank you, danna.”

“Nope, it’s Hijikata-kun’s turn to set the example for our children.”

Hijikata makes a _tch_ at Gintoki but cooperates, allowing Yamazaki to go through the motions of taking a measurement of his body before in turn taking the same measurement of Toshi-tan’s and Gin-tan’s bodies.

Yamazaki bemoans the fact that he can’t make more precise measurements, but his tape measure is too wide for their small bodies and only goes down to millimeters. He instead uses twine, which he then places against his tape measure to get a measurement.

When he goes through the motions of taking Hijikata’s waist measurement, he makes the mistake of pointing out that it’s three centimeters larger than it was last time he sized him.

“I bet you don’t weigh four kilograms less than I do anymore,” Gintoki says to Hijikata, with a wicked grin.

Hijikata whacks Yamazaki and Gintoki over the head.

Gin-tan and Toshi-tan cover their mouths and silently giggle at the spectacle.

Holding the top of his head in pain, Gintoki glares at the boys and says sarcastically, “I’m so glad I could supply some entertainment for you two assholes.”

Yamazaki finishes with the most awkward measurement, the inseam. Hijikata can’t stop himself from blushing as his measurement is taken, but Yamazaki is a professional and doesn’t act like anything untoward is happening. He doesn’t even break from his professional tailor routine as he carefully takes tiny inseam measurements that require that he nearly touch teeny, tiny naked genitals, as the boys are not wearing underwear.

Gintoki asks Yamazaki if he would be able to make a futon, pillows, and bedding, along with towels for the boys to dry themselves off with after they bathe.

Yamazaki glances at the pile of rags the boys have been sleeping on and makes a disgusted, disapproving face. He then fakes a smile at Gintoki and says, “Of course, of course, danna.”

When Yamazaki leaves, Gintoki and Hijikata have a pity party, pouting about the way Yamazaki pointed out their flaws as new parents. They agree that it’s not their fault they’ve done a less than stellar job of providing proper clothing and furniture for their children. They’re doing their best, dammit, but being new parents of tiny humanoid hatchlings is difficult!


	6. Putting on a Fundoshi Seems Complicated, but It’s Not That Difficult Once You Get the Hang of It

Three days after being introduced to the boys, Yamazaki brings over the first completed item, a futon. It’s just the right size for the boys to sleep on. It’s filled with tightly packed dry jasmine rice grains, which gives the mattress a sturdy shape and provides support and comfort. Surrounding the rice is a thin layer of cotton batting, to make sure the ends of the rice grains don’t poke through the mattress’ fabric exterior, which could damage the mattress or injure the boys while they sleep or get in or out of bed. Yamazaki apologizes to Gin-tan and Toshi-tan for not having any other bedding ready as he places the same old raggedy ‘sheets,’ ‘pillows,’ and ‘blanket’ on top of the new mattress.

The boys act a bit like mattress store customers, coming over and placing a hand on top of the bed, feeling it out, before sitting on the edge of it and bouncing their butts up and down, to check how firm or soft it is. They then lie down on their backs, testing how it will feel to sleep on. They smile at each other, which Yamazaki takes as their seal of approval.

A week after meeting the boys, Yamazaki brings over real pillows, a set of crisp white sheets, including pillowcases, and a dark blue blanket. The bedding is machine washable and of high quality. Since sewing machine stitching is too wide-set, Yamazaki stitches all the seams and hems by hand.

Even though the boys don’t talk, Yamazaki always talks to them. He promises to work on making them clothes, footwear, and towels.

Ten days after meeting Yamazaki, the boys finally get their first real clothes. Yamazaki accompanies Hijikata for his every-other-day visit to bring the clothing over. It seems Toshi-tan and Gin-tan have grown rather fond of the Shinsengumi’s plain inspector, as they run over to silently greet him when he arrives.

He greets them back, telling them, “You guys have probably seen danna get dressed, so you might be able to figure out how to put on the yukata and obi, but I bet you’ve never seen this kind of underwear before.”

“I wanted to make them boxers or briefs,” Yamazaki explains to the co-parents, “but sewing elastic into such small clothing would have been very difficult. So, I asked myself, what kind of underwear did men wear before elastic was invented? That’s when it came to me: fundoshi! Now, which one of you wants to demonstrate for Gin-tan and Toshi-tan how to put it on?”

“ _Tch_. No way,” Hijikata immediately responds, crossing his arms defiantly.

Gintoki zips into his bedroom, grabs a fundoshi from his dresser, comes back out to the living room, and starts stripping right then and there. Luckily, neither Shinpachi nor Kagura are there at the moment.

“Ah, thank you for volunteering, danna,” Yamazaki says.

“No problem,” Gintoki replies, smirking at Hijikata, “Anything for _our_ precious children, isn’t that right, Hijikata-kun?”

Hijikata was just about to excuse himself, to avoid getting an eyeful of his co-parent’s junk, but he changes his mind. He isn’t about to let Gintoki act like the more devoted parent. Fuck that. Instead, he plays along, agreeing with forced congeniality, “That’s right, Sakata-kun.”

When Gintoki gets down to just boxers, a squeal comes from behind a closed cabinet door. “ _Ahh_ , I’m about to see Gin-san naked! _Eeee!_ I’m so excited–!”

Gintoki slides the cabinet door open. In unison, he and his co-parent each direct a right fist at one of Sacchan’s eyes, breaking both of her glasses lenses. The broken vision correction apparatus falls to the floor. Sacchan blinks a few times as she climbs out of the cabinet, stepping on the already-broken glasses, destroying them further. She then walks toward Yamazaki, reaching out toward him like a zombie, mumbling in a scary voice, “Gin-san, you’re so sexy when you’re wearing clothes. When you’re naked like this, I can’t hold myself back.”

Before Sacchan gets any farther, Gintoki grabs her and binds her with the rope he finds in the cabinet she was hiding in. He also finds a roll of duct tape in the cabinet. He tears off a strip of tape and slaps it across her mouth, telling her, “I hate to do this, because I know you like it, and I hate to do anything you like, but I need you to shut the fuck up for a second.”

He shoves her back in the cabinet and closes the door. He then pulls his boxers down over his hips and lets gravity take them to the floor.

Hijikata covers his eyes with one hand and complains, “Hurry and cover that stuff up.”

“Yes, yes,” Gintoki responds, rolling his eyes. He throws one end of his long fundoshi cloth over his shoulder and threads the other end between his legs, up his ass crack, around and all the way across the front of his waist, and back around to the top of his ass crack, where he loops the cloth underneath and around itself, to keep it in place. He then drops the end of the cloth that was on his shoulder down, so it hangs in front of his crotch. He takes that piece of cloth between his legs and loops it around the other cloth that’s already wedged up his ass crack, making the whole thing secure and stable.

Both boys look astonished. They curiously pick up their own lengths of cloth and examine them, but they seem befuddled.

“Hey, it’s ok, guys. I know, I did it fast. I’ll do it slow, so you can see what I did,” Gintoki assures. He undoes his fundoshi and gets ready to start over. Looking at the boys, he asks, “Ready?”

It seems they are, because they pull their togas off over their heads and watch him, following his lead through each step. In under a minute, the miniature men are wearing fundoshi! They look at and touch each other’s and their own new undergarments with intense fascination for a minute, and then they act like they’re about to go straight back to their normal running and jumping everywhere routine.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Gintoki yells at them, waving his arms and looking like a crazy person wearing nothing but a fundoshi.

They seem like they can’t decide if they want to comply with him or not, but they patiently wait once their favorite uncle tells them, “Wait, Gin-tan, Toshi-tan. I have more for you.” Yamazaki holds out two tiny yukata, one draped over each index finger. Gin-tan’s yukata is light blue, and Toshi-tan’s is dark gray. The boys hesitantly come over and touch the garments. Their little faces light up when they feel the soft fabric. Yamazaki gives them a sympathetic, “I know, you guys were tired of wearing ratty old torn-up pieces of low-quality cotton. This will feel a lot nicer.”

Gintoki shoots murderous eye-darts at the back of Yamazaki’s oblivious head for insulting his favorite kimono and his parenting skills at the same time.

The boys take the yukata from Yamazaki and put them on the way they’ve seen it done; in other words, completely wrong, with them halfway hanging off their bodies.

Yamazaki corrects them, “No…uh, _both_ arms go in the sleeves…” Addressing Gintoki, he says, “Danna, can you please put your kimono on with both arms in the sleeves?”

Sighing in expression of his wounded pride, Gintoki picks up his kimono and puts it on correctly.

The boys do what they’re seeing, but they are still confused on one point. Yamazaki corrects them again, “Ah! It goes left over right, not right over left… You might be confused because you’re watching someone else do it, but their left is not your left…” Addressing Gintoki again, he requests, “Danna, can you please fold your kimono the wrong way, right over left?”

Gintoki complies, and the boys mirror him, which finally gets their yukata on correctly. Next, Yamazaki hands them their obi, which are made of soft fabric, like a child would use with a yukata. Gin-tan’s obi is purple, and Toshi-tan’s is light gray. Gintoki shows them how to tie them simply and informally, just to keep their yukata from opening up and exposing everyone to tiny man-bulges.

Both co-parents have to admit, the boys look dapper in their clothing. They are thankful to Yamazaki for lending his sewing skills. However, that doesn’t stop them from having another pity party after Yamazaki leaves. They forget their earlier competition over which of them is the better parent and instead bond over the fact that there was no way they could have been prepared to clothe seven-centimeter-tall adult children.

Once or twice a week, Yamazaki brings more new items for the boys. After a month, they have everything they need, including tiny-human-sized bath towels and spare yukata, obi, bed sheets, and multiple spare fundoshi. Most importantly, given that it’s still winter, Yamazaki made them string tabi, to keep their feet warm. The little black footwear were the smallest and most complicated items to make, which is why they took the longest. He brings over his own tabi that he wears at festivals and shows them how to put them on and secure them.

The boys are fond of their Uncle Zaki, but they also like their Auntie Sacchan. She frankly pays more attention to certain details, like making sure the boys have enough fresh water, than Gintoki does. When Gintoki forgets, she takes care of it.

One day, the boys accidentally knock a decorative plate off a shelf while they are play-fighting. It shatters when it hits the wood floor. They flee and hide.

Sacchan comes out of the cabinet she was hiding in and pretends to fret over the broken plate. “Oh, no. What is Gin-san going to do when he sees this? Will he drip hot candle wax on my breasts and then whip them with a cat o’ nine tails as punishment?”

Gintoki comes out of his bedroom when he hears the ruckus. He takes what he sees at face value and assumes Sacchan broke the plate. He twists her right arm behind her back and escorts her out of the apartment. “Don’t talk about your breasts in front of me. That’s disgusting. I have more interest in Hijikata-kun’s breasts than I do in yours. Get out!”

He slams and locks the door behind her.

Sacchan is both a ninja and a seasoned stalker, so of course being locked out doesn’t keep her out for any amount of time. When she breaks in again in the middle of the night, the boys get out of bed to greet her, seemingly silently thanking her for her help.

A couple days later, while Gintoki and the kids are out on a job, Sacchan goes into Gintoki’s bedroom and starts creepily sniffing his stuff – his clothes, futon, pillow, etc. She hits the perverted stalker jackpot when she spots a pair of dirty boxers on his bedroom floor. She rolls around on the floor with the boxers mashed against her face, squealing ecstatically, “ _Oh_ , Gin-san, it smells like you! _Eeee!_ I can’t stand it!! I wish I could stuff these boxers up my nostrils, so I can smell you all the time!!!”

In her perversion, she doesn’t notice Gintoki and Kagura tromping up the stairs, about to return home.

Luckily for her, the boys notice. They run into the bedroom and frantically pat her arm, to get her attention.

She stops being a pervert for two seconds and listens. She then gasps and whispers, “Gin-san is coming! Thank you, boys!”

She throws the boxers approximately where she found them and quickly dives into her hiding spot in the subflooring under one of the corner tatami mats.

Unfortunately, even as Gintoki and Kagura are walking through the front door, she has difficulty getting the floor and mat to go back down flush with the rest of the room. The boys prepare to distract their silver-haired parent and buy her time. They climb onto the bottom shelf of the bookcase in the bedroom.

Kagura goes into the kitchen, while Gintoki heads to his bedroom. He stops at the threshold, muttering to himself, “Did I leave the door to the bedroom open?”

Sacchan’s hiding place door is still open by a couple centimeters when Gintoki steps into the room.

As the boys planned, all Gintoki notices is the two of them chasing and fighting each other around his Ketsuno Ana figurine, threatening to break his most beloved possession.

In a panic, Gintoki runs over to the bookshelf and crouches down to address his children. “Hey, you two! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

Just then, Sacchan gets the door to her hiding place to close properly, making a noticeable wood-hitting-wood noise. Gintoki begins to turn his head to look over his right shoulder, toward the source of the sound, so the boys push the Ketsuno Ana figure over onto its back on the shelf. It takes Gin-tan and Toshi-tan working together to make it happen, as the figure is twice their height and far outweighs them.

Gintoki whips his head back toward the shelf and forgets about the strange noise he heard. Frightened for the welfare of his favorite figurine, he chastises them, “ _Aaahhh!!!_ What are you idiots doing?!! Be careful!! You’re going to break her!!!”

The boys leap down to the floor and run away.

Gintoki picks the figurine up and inspects it. In a soft voice, he consoles the porcelain object, “Hey, baby. Are you all right? I don’t think you’re broken. There, there. Don’t worry about my kids. I’m sure they’ll accept you as their stepmom eventually.”

By the time the boys are three months old, their presence in everyone’s lives feels completely normal. Gintoki and Hijikata have adjusted to Hijikata visiting the Yorozuya at least three times a week to spend time with the boys.

Both Gintoki and Hijikata are thankful they only got _fake_ pregnant and had _fake_ babies. If they’d had two real human babies, it would be hard for both of them to keep working; they’d be too busy with midnight feedings and diaper changes. Let’s face facts: Without some serious help, Gintoki and Hijikata would hardcore fail at taking proper care of two newborn babies. Luckily, they had tiny adult humans instead. Gin-tan and Toshi-tan are easy to care for and entertaining to watch.

Gintoki comes up with a solution for keeping the boys a secret when potential clients visit his home. Basically, the boys hide, and if a guest questions the tiny bed and dollhouse dishes sitting here and there, Gintoki blames the fourteen-year-old girl who lives with him. Not knowing Kagura isn’t the type to be into girly stuff like dolls, his clients usually buy the explanation easily enough.

If there’s anything Gintoki dislikes about his children, it’s how lovey-dovey they are with each other. They cuddle when they sleep. When they aren’t chasing each other around or play-fighting, they’re constantly holding hands or sitting right next to each other and leaning their heads on each other’s shoulders.

At first, Gintoki thought his irritation stemmed from it just in general being gross to see affection displayed so openly. However, after further thought, he had to admit that he’s jealous. When he puts all his effort into it, he occasionally can get Hijikata to kiss him. He never gets any farther than kissing, and Hijikata always goes right back to acting like he hates him afterward. How come Hijikata’s tiny self is so much nicer to Gintoki’s tiny self than normal size Hijikata is to normal size Gintoki?

Gin-tan has it easy. Gintoki thinks it’s not fair. It’s not fair at all.


End file.
